How Much?

How much is it worth —
the actual copy of
Poems by Pierre Reverdy
Frank O’Hara had in his pocket
when he wrote, “My heart is
in my pocket, it is
Poems by Pierre Reverdy
Probably not
as much as Duchamp’s chess set
or urinal: that’s because O’Hara
was not a painter but a poet,
and you know what that means:
while the other arts add value
to their objects, conspiring
with the world of commodities
to nurture the enrichment economy,
verse makes its objects worse
relieving them of their worth
casting them out into the world
beyond the cave of moneymaking
into another place that we do not
yet understand and cannot name.
How much is it worth,
the actual heart of Frank O’Hara,
the one stripped of its metaphors?
Can his heart actually be divested
of such accoutrements,
or must we be forever lost
in the moist mist, on the brink
of the heart in itself,
an irretrievable object?
When Shelley was
cremated, his heart refused to burn.
Mary Shelley carried it with her
for years wrapped in a silk shroud
inside a jar.
When revered Tibetan Buddhist
teachers die, their hearts become relics
and are said to bestow blessings—
the greatest of which
is the knowledge of emptiness.